The Gab Fest gets a phone call.

This is the Slate Political Gab Fest.

For Friday, December 7, 2007, I'm Dale Willman.

John has lost somewhere in New York, but Christopher Beam joins Emily and David for today's

Gab Fest. On the agenda this week, flip-flopping intelligence on Iran.

Romney finally makes his Mormon speech, and the Supreme Court hears more on Guantanamo.

To introduce the discussion, here's David.

Hello, and welcome to the slate political gab fest.

I'm David Plott sitting in for John Dickerson, who is, where is John?

He's in New York, and he was supposed to be on the phone, but he couldn't hear us.

That's Emily Bazelon.

And joining us, special guest appearance is the man I like to think is the next John Dickerson,

because they share the swooping blonde hair,

the rakish good looks, and the journalistic, skillful journalistic parents, and interest in politics.

Christopher Beam, Chris, welcome to the Gab Fest. Have you been on this before?

No, this is my first time. I once sat in and typed on my computer back when you used my office as the GabFest room.

That would have been also the conference room, back where everything had to do triple-off.

But now you've graduated, now you have your own office, right?

And we should say that Chris writes our trailhead blog, which is our Slate's campaign blog.

So don't be afraid. Don't worry about when Emily says something that's brilliant, don't be afraid to compliment her. I'll just do my best impression of John Dickerson. Please tell him so. Do your impression of John Dickerson. That'd be great. Channel John. You can talk a lot about really boring polls. You can... Use the word narrative at least five times.

Yeah, that's good.

All right.

...